Filed to story: Falling for My Ex's Mafia Dad Novel Free PDF (Fay Alden & Kent Lippert)
God, was she even my mother?
Sobs break from me as the pain starts to subside, and suddenly I realize that Kent is on my other side, turning me so that I can lean against his chest. I rest my head against him, panting, dazed.
“Is she all right?” I hear him ask Gio, his voice frantic with worry as I blink, trying to focus my eyes.
“She’s exhausted, zio, emotionally and physically,” Gio murmurs, and as I lean against Kent I see him shaking his head, frustrated and worried. “Come on, Fay,” Gio murmurs, “we need to move you to the floor…”
I nod, scootching myself sideways off the couch and leaning against Kent, letting him take my weight as Gio takes my legs and together they lower me to the living room floor. Janeen’s already there, I realize, spreading out towels. The puppy jumps up against my knee, also worried, and I reach out a passive hand to pat him wanting to comfort the poor thing even as my mind is elsewhere.
“Janeen,” I murmur, turning towards her.
“It’s fine, sister,” she says, reaching out and brushing my cheek with her fingers. We both turn our heads as we hear a siren on the road close enough to be just outside the gate.
“Go and open it, Janeen,” Gio orders, his voice clipped. “And please take this dog it will not leave Fay alone ”
I watch as Janeen nods, scooping the puppy up into her arms as she runs for the door, pressing the buttons that will open the gate and let the ambulance in.
I look up at Kent, worried, in a great deal of pain not really understanding, anymore, in my physical and emotional exhaustion, what precisely is happening
Kent shakes his head at me, worried as hell, fear written all over his face and flooding his eyes.
“Fay!” Gio says, snapping his fingers in front of my face and drawing my gaze forward to where he kneels between my knees. “You have to pay attention, now, all right? It is almost time to push.”
My eyes go wide.
What?
Are we are we seriously there already?
Gio nods to me. “Your labor is proceeding very quickly, Fay,” he says, his voice steady. “It’s time now. You have to be strong.” Behind me, I hear Janeen opening the front door and a great deal of commotion as she directs whoever it is to the living room, where I’m leaning back against Kent, who kneels on the floor behind me.
Shakily, I nod, doing my very best to pull myself back together, to focus on this.
Because this this is the last part
Everything else is done, and now if I can just get through this
“Hey,” Kent snaps, and instinctually I turn my head up, looking up into his face. “You can do this, Fay,” he says, nodding to me, forcing his expression to change now filled with warmth and determination and love. “You’re not going to fall apart on me now, right? Not after all of this.”
I stare at him for a long moment, honestly considering it, and then I nod, even as a team of paramedics come forward, murmuring questions to Gio in Italian. He begins to explain, but I ignore them all.
“Time for the baby, Kent,” I whisper, a tremulous little smile coming to my lips.
“This is the worst shit you’ve ever pulled,” he murmurs to me, a little smirk on his own face now as he presses a kiss to my hair, “lying to me about being in labor for twenty-four hours just to get your way?”
“Well, I knew you couldn’t be mad,” I sigh, “if I gave you a baby at the end of it all.”
Kent barks a harsh laugh and settles his body more completely behind mine, pulling me back a little. I let him take all of my weight behind me as a paramedic kneels next to me and apologizes quietly before pulling my dress up and wrapping some kind of medical strap around my belly something to monitor the baby, I guess but I don’t really have the energy to think about it.
Because then the next contraction hits.
Gio consults for a moment with a woman kneeling next to him, who nods. Then he turns to me.
“All right, Fay,” he says, his eyes steady and confident. “It’s time for you to push.”The pain is more intense than anything I’ve ever experienced to this point in my life so much so that I’m barely able to focus on anything else. But somewhere, beyond it all, I hear and obey Gio’s steady commands to push, and feel Kent’s hands tight around mine.
I push and push when I’m told to, following Gio’s calm counts of ten with breaths in between. There are gaps, too, when the pain lessens, when I’m not contracting
But they’re brief, and then the pain comes again, and I push.
But, like everything towards the end of this labor, everything happens very, very fast.
And quite suddenly, as I give a guttural yell alongside one final push…
There’s a sudden lessening of the pain and the stressed tension on my lower half
And the sound of a little baby’s cry fills the air.
A cry breaks from my throat too as my eyes fly open and I see Gio reaching lifting up the little baby, and Gio he’s smiling his face rich with joy as he holds the little baby up and turns him a little all red and mad so that I can see.
“Well done, Fay,” he murmurs as I stumble out a shaky little laugh and lean fully back against Kent, unable to tear my eyes away from the baby. “You did beautifully.”
“Give me my baby -” I say, my voice at once somehow breathy and demanding as I lean forward, reaching for it
“A moment,” Kent whispers in my ear, wrapping an arm around me and holding me warm against him, “let them check him out for a second ”
“Him?” I gasp, looking up at Kent in sudden shock and surprise. “It’s a ”
“A boy,” Kent says, beaming down at me, and I laugh again. “A little boy, Fay ”
“Oh…” I sigh, completely undone by the knowledge of it a little boy, I have a little boy now, a son…
“Oh lame,” Janeen says, and I laugh harder now, looking up to see her still holding the puppy tight in her arms as she scowls a little at the edge of the group of paramedics. “Princess Baby is a boy ”
“Don’t call my baby lame ” I protest.
“I didn’t say the baby was lame,” she says, turning her head to me for a moment before staring down again at her beautiful new nephew, “I just said his gender was lame. Which is an undeniable fact, Fay, you can’t get mad at that. Plus, now I owe Daniel fifty bucks.”
The paramedics finish looking him over, cutting the umbilical cord and wrapping him up in one of the towels. I keep my eyes on my child as the doctors help me finish up the messy process of giving birth. And then, once it’s all finished?
They lay my baby finally into my arms, and I burst into tears.
I stare down into his face through my foggy eyes, trying to wipe the liquid away so I can see him better. But the tears just keep coming.
“You did so wonderfully, Fay,” Gio murmurs, leaning close and kissing me on the cheek. “It all went well a textbook home birth. The paramedics and I don’t have any concerns, all right? So you just relax.”
I look up at him briefly and nod, barely hearing what he’s saying, and perhaps intuiting this he shifts his gaze to Kent and nods steadily to him. “We’ll be here, all right? To monitor. But we’ll give you two a few minutes alone with your son.”
“Thank you, Gio,” I whisper, looking back at my baby. I shake my head, still baffled as I stare at his perfect, tiny little face
“They’re dragging me away,” I jump a little as I hear Janeen’s disappointed voice and I look up to see her kneeling by my side. She kisses me quickly on the cheek. “I’ll be back soon to hold that baby, all right? They can only keep me away so long.”